The team enjoyed some fresh lemonade and a light salad lunch, chatting with Dr. Vance about his medical expertise and his in-the-flesh meeting on the Zurich-Orbital Habitat with Chief Justice Hino about three months ago.

Lunch was interrupted by the front door flying open and an LMG-equipped Steel Lynx drone entering the room; Tui and Oxana shot it to pieces with their pistols

Solana and her spirit engaged an invisible dwarf hermetic who had entered the room with the drone

The butler took aim at Solana and shot her, before being killed by Tui and Oxana

A plumber’s van across the street popped up a turret and fired a hail of suppressive fire into the front of the house, forcing everyone prone

Solana continued to exchange Mana Bolts with the invisible dwarf. Tui and Solana’s Guardian spirit killed the dwarf.

Solana ordered her spirit to kill the person in the van

Vance turned on Oxana, trying (unsuccessfully) to shoot her

Solana took cover; Tui struck Vance, breaking his ribs (and discovering gobs of nanopaste disguise on his hand when he did so); and Solana restrained Vance, dragging him behind cover

The van continued firing into the room, targeting Solana and Tui primarily

Tui covered the difference to the van, and he and Solana’s spirit together killed the unconscious female elf rigger in there

Marshall got in touch to say that Dr. Vance had called him, and was happy to arrange a meeting at his house in the Evo compound with them. The team asked Marshall to set it up for the evening.

Fleeing the scene (just!) before the first Knight Errant drones got there, the team took “Vance” to an abandoned warehouse in a former industrial district of FDC. Tui led the interrogation, supported by Solana’s magic and Oxana’s medical intervention.

“Vance’s” name is really Jazz. The rest of his team are Vice (the butler), Vrede (the rigger) and Spectre (the mage)

The team were hired about a week ago by a well turned-out eastern European/Russian-looking Ms. Johnson.

There’s also a hacker involved somewhere, but they were hired separately and there’s no contact between Jazz’ team and them.

The job was to keep runners away from Vance, and attempt to kill them if they were asking questions about Chief Justice Hino.

Upon completion, Jazz was to send confirmation that the threat had been neutralised to an anonymous commcode, and payment would arrive through escrow

Marshall’s research indicated that this would be through Banco Cooperativo, a Swiss bank that he was very reluctant to hack due to their serious attitude to Matrix security

The job was arranged through a fixer called Simeon. At the team’s request, Jazz set up a meeting with Simeon in an hour or two at a hot dog stand in front of Washington Union Station.

Solana wiped Jazz’ memory and Marshall dealt with the commlink and cybereyes. He also discovered that a lot of data had been erased in the past 15 minutes, by a hacker whose signature matched that of the one who had set up the fake datatrail leading to “Vance.”